Download Hull-House Maps and Papers Citizen

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Many of the programs would become
permanent departments of parishes
and functions of diocesan charities—
all made possible through the “substantial boost from below” provided
by settlement workers (p. 178).
This book’s setting is Chicago, a
common site for studies of American
Catholicism of this era. More work
remains to be done on other midwestern cities such as nearby Gary,
Indiana, as well as on cities with less
substantial immigration, such as Indianapolis. Future studies might also
consider the aftermath of the inte-
gration of upwardly mobile Catholic
women. The move of Catholics into
non-sectarian charities was often an
indication of their general acceptance
into the macro-culture and a loss of
their distinctive identity. It seems that
acculturation was the result, regardless of who piloted the effort.
MICHAEL D. JACOBS is assistant professor of history at the University of
Wisconsin-Baraboo. His research
focuses on American ethnicity, diversity, and intolerance movements.
Hull-House Maps and Papers
A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of
Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing
Out of the Social Conditions
By Residents of Hull-House, a Social Settlement. Introduction by Rima
Lunin Schultz
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Pp. 178. Illustrations, notes, appendix, index.
$50.00.)
Citizen
Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy
By Louise W. Knight
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. xvi, 582. Photographs, abbreviations, notes,
bibliography, index. $22.50)
Hull-House Maps and Papers was a
groundbreaking text published in
1895 by the residents of Hull House
and edited by Jane Addams. They
described and measured group patterns associated with immigrants,
working conditions, specific laborers,
labor unions, social settlements, and
art. Women’s moral agency was cen-
tral to their use of social science to
improve democracy and the lives of
the disenfranchised. This book is a
towering statement by early sociologists, especially women, and an outstanding example of the application
of knowledge in the community.
Hull-House residents continued
to map cultural, social, political, and
REVIEWS
demographic information in their
neighborhood for the next forty years.
As the neighborhood was increasingly studied (e.g. by occupations, family size, housing, milk quality, food
use, and epidemiology), the findings
were charted and hung on the walls
of the settlement house for the neighbors to see and discuss.
The maps included in this reprint
revealed to the people of the neighborhood the patterns of their lifestyles
and the implications of these patterns
for community issues and interests.
Repeatedly, Hull-House residents and
neighbors initiated campaigns for
major social changes as a result of this
information: e.g., establishing the
eight-hour day, the minimum wage,
and the elimination of child labor.
They also worked in numerous social
movements on behalf of labor unions,
women’s suffrage, and arts and crafts.
Rima Lunin Schultz writes a
clear, concise, and powerful introduction to the text. She documents
the significance of the book over the
intervening years and shows why it
continues to be important. The combination of the original text and
Schultz’s introduction make the book
accessible to the general public, just
as the residents intended. Book clubs
and study groups could enjoy discussing this book and comparing its
findings to contemporary patterns of
immigration, urbanization, and social
problems. Midwestern cities—for
example, Indianapolis and South
Bend—exhibit many patterns similar
to those found in Chicago in the past.
I also recommend the book for levels
of school ranging from high school
civics and social science courses
through graduate university training.
Louise W. Knight raises similar
questions about citizenship and community in her biography of Jane
Addams. Knight documents Addams’s
life from her birth in 1860 until the
achievement of her “half life” in either
1898 (p. 1) or 1899 (p. 409), what
Knight calls “the years of her becoming” (p. 1). Citizen: Jane Addams and
the Struggle for Democracy is premised
on the argument that Addams was
raised in a Christian evangelical home
with a moral absolutist perspective:
“By 1898 she had rejected the individualistic, absolutist, benevolent
ethics of her father and her own class
in favor of what she perceived to be
the working-class ethic of cooperative justice, which she found less selfish and self-righteous” (p. 4).
Knight takes almost two hundred
pages to arrive at the opening of Hull
House. Using archival information
and extensive citations from Addams’s
classic text Twenty Years at Hull-House
(1910), Knight labors to portray
Addams and her family as rigid and
emotionally cold. I find neither her
evidence nor argument compelling.
Addams’s early life was filled with
warm remembrances of the gentleness of her father, and this affection
and close relationship are lacking in
Knight’s portrayal of them.
The vital Hull-House neighborhood and the whirl of activities surrounding Addams become muted and
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INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY
boring in this text. Knight’s book is
tedious and labored, oriented to supporting her view of Addams as having been neither a true democrat nor
citizen until 1899.
One need only read Hull-House
Maps and Papers to find Knight’s cursory analysis of the book (pp. 32631) lacking in depth and insight. I
recommend reading the lively and
humane Twenty Years at Hull-House
to begin to understand Addams, her
neighbors and friends, and the generous worldview that makes America a democracy.
MARY JO DEEGAN is professor of sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She teaches and publishes on
the history of sociology, and her
books include Race, Hull-House, and
the University of Chicago: A New Conscience Against Ancient Evils (2003).
Looking Beyond the Dixie Highway
Dixie Roads and Culture
Edited by Claudette Stager and Martha Carver
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Pp. xxi, 298. Maps, illustrations. $48.00.)
This volume examines the history
and roadside culture of the Dixie
Highway, one of the nation’s first comprehensive road systems, designed in
the early twentieth century to provide
better access from the Midwest to the
emerging tourist industries of the
South. This handsome and wellorganized collection begins by exploring the local histories of the road’s
planning and development in the
period between the two world wars.
The subsequent ten chapters examine the roadside material culture that
emerged in the following decades.
Indiana entrepreneur Carl Fisher spearheaded the development of
the Dixie Highway in 1915. Fisher’s
contributions as businessman and
Good Roads proponent are the subject of the first chapter by Suzanne
Fischer, “The Best Road South: The
Failure of the Dixie Highway in Indiana.” Fisher’s insistence that the highway incorporate existing local roads
and tourist attractions gave the road
its character as a major tourist route,
but also lead to its meandering structure and to its separate eastern and
western divisions.
Martha Carver addresses the
quandaries of managing money and
mountains while constructing the
Tennessee portion of the roadway.
The material problems and marketing potential of the Florida Everglades
are the topic of Carrie Scupholm’s
chapter. Jeffrey L. Durbin and Christie
H. McLaren detail the conflicting priorities of locals and tourists in the
development of better roads in Georgia and Arkansas, respectively. Sara
Amy Leach explores the role of
women in merging preservation with